The North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee (NAASC)

*Travel funding for US scientists is made possible through the generous support of the US National Science Foundation. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. #1518280. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

NAASC Conference Award Applications will be Accepted until March 5, 2018 in these two categories of support:

1: NAASC US Early-Career Scientist Travel Awards of $1,000 USD each will be awarded as reimbursements to up to 10 applicants that submit the full package by March 5 2018 and are selected by the award review committee in a competitive process.

Eligibility: must be a US scientist working in Arabidopsis research at a US institution of higher learning in these career stages: graduate students, postdocs in a postdoc title, and junior faculty that are in their first two years of their first faculty position. Must be a US Citizen or a permanent resident of the US. Must present your research via an oral or poster presentation at the conference (and submit a preliminary abstract during this award application.)

Application package consists of: Providing information via the google form (listed below), to include an advisor that will provide a letter of recommendation (students and postdocs only); preliminary research abstract including title (format: up to 300 words, and clearly state the aim, methods, results and conclusion of your work) Note abstract submission to the award committee is for award review only; you must submit your abstract directly to the ICAR 2018 organizers via their official website, by March 31 to be considered for oral or poster presentation. To receive your award, if you are selected, you must present your work at ICAR 2018.

You may submit applications for more than one award (Early Career, $1,000; full-funding URM award, see below; and ICAR 2018 organizer awards: 500 Euro, see below.) However, if you are offered (and you accept) a full-funding URM award by NAASC, you may ONLY accept that one award. If you are not offered a full-funding URM award you may accept both other awards if you are offered them (e.g. Early Career, $1,000 and ICAR 2018 organizer award: 500 Euro)

Applicants must arrange for the necessary Letter of Recommendation to be received by the awards committee coordinator by the deadline of March 5 2018. If it is not received in time, the application is incomplete and will not be reviewed. Receipt of the letter will be acknowledged by email.
Awards Committee Coordinator: Joanna Friesner, NAASC Coordinator, jdfriesner(at)ucdavis.edu

To Apply, by no later than March 5 2018, for a US Early-Career Scientist Travel Award of up to $1,000 to ICAR 2018-Finland, CLICK HERE

2: NAASC Under-represented Minority in US Science Full Participation Funding Awards will be awarded to up to 7 applicants that submit the full package by March 5 2018 and are selected by the award review committee in a competitive process.

Eligibility: must be a US scientist working in Arabidopsis, plant biology, or other biological research (with interest in plant biology) at a US institution of higher learning. Must qualify by being in one or more of these historically under-represented groups in US science: African American; Latino/a American of South or Central American descent only; Native American/American Indian; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (with origin in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific islands.); Alaska Native (of the indigenous peoples of Alaska, United States: Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures).

Additionally: faculty that teach and train US under-represented minorities in US science via work at accredited HBCUs, 1890 Institutions and Tribal Colleges and Universities may apply and do not need to themselves be an under-represented minority. All applicants must be US citizens or permanent residents with exception possible for faculty at HBCUs/1890s/TCUs only.

Application package consists of: Providing information via the google form (listed below), to include an advisor (or for faculty: department chair) that will provide a letter of recommendation; optional preliminary research abstract including title (format: up to 300 words, and clearly state the aim, methods, results and conclusion of your work). Note abstract submission to the award committee is for award review only; you must submit your abstract directly to the ICAR 2018 organizers via their official website, by March 31 to be considered for oral or poster presentation.

You may submit applications for more than one award (Early Career, $1,000; ICAR 2018 organizer awards: 500 Euro, see below; and this full-funding URM award.) However, if you are offered (and you accept) a full-funding URM award by NAASC, you may ONLY accept that one award. If you are not offered a full-funding URM award you may accept both other awards if you are offered them (e.g. Early Career, $1,000 and ICAR 2018 organizer award: 500 Euro)

Applicants must arrange for the necessary Letter of Recommendation to be received by the awards committee coordinator by the deadline of March 5 2018. If it is not received in time, the application is incomplete and will not be reviewed. Receipt of the letter will be acknowledged by email.
Awards Committee Coordinator: Joanna Friesner, NAASC Coordinator, jdfriesner(at)ucdavis.edu

To Apply, by no later than March 5 2018, for a US Under-represented Minority in US Science Full Participation Award to ICAR 2018-Finland, CLICK HERE

NAASC Staff: Joanna Friesner (University of California- Davis) has served as the NAASC Coordinator since 2006, including four years as MASC Coordinator. She can be reached at [jdfriesner@ucdavis.edu]. NAASC is primarily composed of U.S. researchers, and typically at least one Canadian researcher, all of whom are elected to four year terms of service by the North American Arabidopsis community. Current and Past NAASC Members are listed at the bottom of the page.

August 29, 2017 Update to NAASC Term of Service: To provide better continuity and shared knowledge for NAASC-organized ICARs, current NAASC agreed, by consensus, to increase the term from four to five years. Current members will opt-in to a 5th year, while all NAASC elections beginning with fall, 2017, will designate 5 year terms for new NAASC members.

NAASC Activities

June 2015: NAASC member Siobhan Brady (as PI, UC Davis) and NAASC Coordinator (as co-PI, UC Davis), with contributions from several project Steering Committee members, were awarded 5 years of funding from the US National Science Foundation to support community engagement and activities focusing on research and training needs for Plant Biology in the 21st Century.
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1518280

Project's Three Main Objectives:

Identify emerging technologies where using Arabidopsis as a model organism will provide fundamental discoveries and enable translational research in crop species

Enhance interdisciplinary training of scientists for academia and extra-academic careers

Increase diversity of Arabidopsis research scientists using targeted mechanisms

Major Project Activities

Annual Focus Groups in each of 4 years (primarily involving North American plant biologists and several international community members) on three main topics:

Computational training of biologists for academia and industry in the 21st Century

Genomic experimental biology techniques for academia and industry in the 21st Century

Interdisciplinary Training and Cross-training for 21st Century Careers

*Wrap Up, Evaluation and Assessment and Write-Shop*

Enabling Participation of US Scientists to attend ICAR (2015-2019):

US Early Career Researcher (ECR) travel awards

US Under-Represented Minority (URM) travel awards for historically under-represented groups in US science

Community activities at each ICAR (2015-2019):

Community workshops on each year's theme (matching the Focus Group)

Interactive programs for community workshops involving early career researchers

ICAR 2017 included an expanded list of activities involving research and training needs, aimed primarily at early-career researchers. These activities were made possible by the ART-21 RCN award from the NSF to NAASC, and through sponsorship and partnership with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (DDPSC) in St. Louis.

Expanded ICAR 2017 Activities That Took Place in St. Louis, Missouri

Pre-Meeting Hands On Workshops for early career applicants. The workshop content focused on emerging bioinformatic and computational skills and emerging genomics technologies. Activities included an full day workshops: Data Carpentry; phenotyping hackathon, and ATAC-seq lab:

Data Carpentry: This event was an example-driven workshop on basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data. Short tutorials alternated with hands-on practical exercises, and participants were encouraged both to help one another, and to try applying what they have learned to their own research problems during and between sessions.

ATAC-seq hands-on workshop on mapping chromatin accessibility and TF footprints: Instructor: Professor Roger Deal (Emory University)- This workshop introduced attendees to the ATAC-seq process including isolation of nuclei, preparation of ATAC-seq libraries, and analysis of the resulting data to identify open chromatin regions and TF footprints. This lab workshop included both wet-lab and computational components.

Hackathon for high-throughput phenotyping: Designer: Cody Markelz (University of California, Davis). On-site Instructors: Malia Gehan and Noah Fahlgren (Donald Danforth Center). Many plant biologists are not formally trained to perform tasks needed to piece together their own image processing phenotyping pipeline. The hackathon focused on expanding on the introduction to genomics data and data management and analysis for genomics research provided in the Data Carpentry workshop.

During the first years of the Arabidopsis Genome Project, an ad hoc committee was formed to forge relationships and foster communication among the groups and countries world-wide who were involved in the genome sequencing effort. It was determined that the committee should be made up of three representatives from North America, two representatives each from continental Europe and the United Kingdom, and one representative each from Australia and Japan. These representatives would be elected by the groups that they would represent, and they would serve terms of three years. This committee was known as the Multinational Science Steering Committee.
In February of 1992, in response to the need for elected North American representatives to the Multinational Science Steering Committee, Howard Goodman, Elliot Meyerowitz and Chris Somerville called for the formation of a North American Arabidopsis Steering Committee (NAASC). In the first election, six North American Arabidopsis researchers were elected.

In its first year, the NAASC dealt with a number of issues including the decision to have a National Arabidopsis meeting in Ohio in 1993, determining who should represent North America on the Multinational Science Steering Committee, and advising the NSF and other funding agencies of the community's needs for database services.

It was additionally determined that the committee would consist of six members and that members would serve for three years. Two new members would be elected annually via the Arabidopsis Newsgroup , and two members would retire.

Since that time, the NAASC has evolved into the main organizing and fundraising body for the International Conference on Arabidopsis Research when it is held in North America. The conference is now held annually and rotates between North America, Europe, and Austral-Asia.

The NAASC also collaborates with MASC members that volunteer to host the annual ICAR. NAASC solicits funds to help North American junior scientists travel to these international meetings. Since 2004, the NAASC has applied for funding to allow underrepresented minorities, and scientists from Historically Black Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions in the United States to fully participate in the Annual Arabidopsis meetings. Additionally, the NAASC serves as a liaison between members of the community and government and not-for-profit granting agencies and provides representation of the community to service facilities.

In 2000, the members of the NAASC unanimously voted to amend the process of election and alter the term of service for members to coincide with the annual conference rather than the calendar year. It was felt that this alteration would help to ensure continuity in the committee. In 2003, the process was again amended, in the following ways:

Each member of the committee will serve for four full years, to further aid in continuity in the committee
Members of the North American Arabidopsis research community who have served previously on NAASC may be re-nominated for the election, and if elected, may serve another term on the committee

Elected NAASC Members

Members of the North American Arabidopsis research community have been extremely generous in their willingness to serve on the NAASC. Since the initial call for an elected committee in 1992, 39 researchers have served on the committee.

NAASC members, past and present, are listed below:

Elliot Meyerowitz 1992 - 1994

Chris Somerville 1992 - 1994

Fred Ausubel 1992 - 1995

Joe Ecker 1992 - 1995

Joanne Chory 1992 - 1996

David Meinke 1992 - 1996

Gloria Coruzzi 1994 - 1997

Mark Estelle 1994 - 1997

Pam Green 1995 - 1998

Rob Last 1995 - 1998

Rick Amasino 1996 - 1999

Daphne Preuss 1996 - 1999

Jeff Dangl 1997 - 2000

Detlef Weigel 1997 - 2000

Chuck Gasser 1998 - 2001

Steve Kay 1998 - 2001

Kathy Barton 1999 - 2002

Mary Lou Guerinot 1999 - 2002

Peter McCourt 2000 - 2003

Mike Sussman 2000 - 2003

Bonnie Bartel 2001 - 2005

Eric Richards 2001 - 2005

Greg Copenhaver 2002 - 2006

Brenda Winkel 2002 - 2006

Philip Benfey 2003 - 2007

Rob McClung 2003 - 2007

Judith Bender 2004 - 2008

Xing-Wang Deng 2004 - 2008

Joe Kieber 2005 - 2009

Xuemei Chen 2005 - 2009

Caren Chang 2006 - 2010

Julian Schroeder 2006 - 2010

Scott Poethig 2007 - 2011

George Haughn 2007 - 2011

Mark Estelle 2008 - 2012

Jane Glazebrook 2008 - 2012

Xinnian Dong 2009 - 2013

Blake Meyers 2009 - 2013

Dominique Bergmann 2010 - 2014

Wolf Frommer 2010 - 2014

Nicholas Provart 2011 - 2015

Jose Alonso 2011 - 2015

Siobhan Brady 2012 - 2016

Keiko Torii 2012 - 2016

Sally Assmann 2013 - 2018 (extended to fit new 5 year term)

Erich Grotewold 2013 - 2018 (extended to fit new 5 year term)

Doris Wagner 2014 - 2018

Richard Vierstra 2014 - 2018

Jose Dinneny 2015 - 2019

Elizabeth Haswell 2015 - 2019

Roger Innes 2016 - 2020

Peter McCourt 2016 - 2020

Sean Cutler 2017 - 2022

Jennifer Nemhauser 2017 - 2022

Last modified on January 6, 2018

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